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a quote from the new york bike snob seems to sum it up
which is yet another example of the Universal Rich Roadie Equipment Paradox: "If you can afford it, you are also too heavy to use it." As a corollary to that, if you lust after ridiculous equipment like this, you also wear white cycling shoes:
! I just hate the feeling of a sluggish bike.
I just accept the feeling of a sluggish rider 🙂
I don't really get that mentality, I'm 68kg, and happy to use lightweight, top end equipment, what does that make me?!
There are some great threads on WW though where someone suggests something only for the OP to say 'I can't use those, I'm 105kg' or something!
[i] I'm about 2 1/2 clem overweight so I'm not really ar$ed about how heavy my bike is. (although I know it weighs about 27-28lbs) [/i]
I KNOW it weighs ABOUT...
Probably find its a lot more.
Hmmm, white shoes (Oops) 😳
Depends how you weight weenie. My 4x bike is under 27lbs despite being a steel framed bit running saint cranks. It has a scandium wheelset but this is strong enough to handle moderate DH. The light wheels make it feel very very light and fast.
My DH bike is a good weight (under 38lbs) but again has a light stan flow wheelset.
If I want to make a bike feel light and accelerate well I fit light wheels. IMHO it's much better to fit a light wheelset and accept the fact you'll need to replace the rims every year or two than spend fortunes on low weigh components that don't directly effect acceleration.
I have come to the conclusion that it is much better to spend your time instead of money to make yourself a better biker. Hence in the park every night over winter doing manuals and I can do them now! If you are time poor and money rich maybe that's while people spend loads of money on their bike.
it's easy junk all the gears you can save pounds ,, while you are there throw your bouncy forks in the corner of the garage,, there is another few pounds,
this weight weenie lark is easy,, ti discs, and a handfull of ti and alloy bolts
if my frame every arrives for my rigid ss 29er we shall see
sadly i weigh 85KG
Building a light bike by simply throwing money at it is easy.
And usually done by overweight unfit folk with nothing better in their lives to spend their money on.
t's easy junk all the gears you can save pounds ,, while you are there throw your bouncy forks in the corner of the garage,, there is another few pounds,
All very well, but I actually agree with sfb on this - pointless having a weenie bike (apart from for pose factor) if you're not going to race on it, and lack of gears and suspension will make you a lot slower than the extra weight they add.
I don't know about "again" though - built my current weenie bike over 4 years ago, with not much in the way of upgrades since, the previous bike built 7 years ago was also weenie. Don't have a spreadsheet for the MTB (hence being surprised at how overweight my old handlebars were when they came off and I wanted to know the difference to the new ones), but do have one for the road bike which does actually match up quite well to the real weight, and even enabled me to plan what I needed to make my target weight in advance, given I found quoted weights which were pretty accurate.
if you lust after ridiculous equipment like this, you also wear white cycling shoes:
On the contrary - was going to import my new (weenie) road shoes to get black as the UK importer only brought white in, but fortunately you can now also get black in the UK.
The industry gave us bad ass and heavy duty bikes. Maybe only now they've realised 90% of the biking population doesn't actually need it? And the result is now we're seeing bikes being built down to a realistic all day over hills and dales strength / weight.
I'm off to drill some holes in my chainset.
I'm not fat, by no stretch of the imagination rich (£21,000 per annum gross earnings), and unfit? Fitness is relative but I can do most speeds. Anybody want a race?
I have three road bikes, the best of which cost just under £3,000 and weighs less than 16lb.
I'm turning my mountain bike in to a lighter build because.....that's it, just because. No other reason, I just want to.
Still, no need for any of that to get in the way of your petty jibes 🙂
Farted today on a ride...
made a noticable difference, i could feel the extra weight on my sadle. 😉
by no stretch of the imagination rich (£21,000 per annum gross earnings)...
I have three road bikes, the best of which cost just under £3,000 and weighs less than 16lb.
You don't need to be rich to have nice bikes. I'm very little richer than you (arguably less given I pay nursery fees etc. - unless of course you do too), yet I have a stable of nice bikes. The thing is, each one of them costs no more than many people piss away on depreciation on a car every year (which is considered to be normal).
I used to go out for a day in peaks with a 0.5l water bottle and a cool tool/ tube, now I seem to 'have' to take 3 l of water and a rucksac full of stuff that i never knew I needed to take out inorder to enjoy myself biking. I don't seem to have become obsessed about weight apart from carrying more of it
I have more money than I can spend and I have one bike which cost £300ish :o)
I don't really get the 'light bikes are only for racing' argument. They may well be for racing, but they're just as valid for regular riding too.
Per given unit of work, a light bike will leave you feeling less tired and able to go for longer, and thus enjoy the ride more.
This has been a particular issue for me this last year as I've clawed back something approaching fitness after a too demanding job wiped out my riding for nearly two years.
Enjoying climbing is a function of power to weight ratio.
Increase the power and reduce the weight and it becomes a more fun experience.
This is more-so on a singlespeed (as I've been riding), since if ones not fit enough to get on top of the gear, its just a lot of pushing rather than riding.
I've still got a stans flow wheel build on my XC bike though...
They may well be for racing, but they're just as valid for regular riding too.
Agreed, I suspect if I wasn't racing I'd have a very light 5" travel bike with wider tyres than I use normally, I'm never going to be into the sort of riding that commands/justifies a long travel bike with burly parts. I'd probably go 15mm thru axle though, and make a few other changes.
My comment re earnings/cost of bike was in responce to the fat, unfit, rich drivel being spouted.
Which is fine if you're happy with that, sfb. I like having expensive bikes - it's my one expensive habit (and I do race, so convince myself I can justify them 😉 )I have more money than I can spend and I have one bike which cost £300ish :o)
I started thinking about weight then thought whats the point , out of my circle of riding buddies i have one of the cheapest bikes (pitch pro with mods which have added a few pounds ) but i'm the lightest person out of everyone ...yes i'm slower up the long climbs but i LOVE riding my bike and am always the first to get to the bottom 😆
Just get out and ride , thats my view !
Here here! 😀
fat, unfit, rich drivel
as opposed to what????
I just accept the feeling of a sluggish rider
I hate that feeling as much as I hate a heavy bike - due to other commitments I'm overweight and slow at the minute and it does my ruddy head in!!
🙂
I'm certain if I put pikes on my xc bike instead of rebas, it'd be more fun on the downs. just tweak em out to 140 for the fun bits/ it's not the weight penalty that bothers me tho (+1.5lbs). or climbs cos i'll still granny ring it. will it screw up my bike that's built for 110mm max though?
Christ on a bike! Calm down Ton, I'm not knocking your ample girth.
The Galic One (amongst others)is suggesting that people who like to reduce the weight of their bikes do so because they are one or more of the following: Fat, rich, unfit.
Although all three are relative to lesser or greater extents, I'm confident I can honestly say that I'm [b]not[/b] fat, rich or unfit.
I am in the proecess of significantly reducing the weight of my mountain bike, therefore to state that 'weight weenie"ing a bike is the preserve of the fat, rich, unfit is drivel.
Barnes if you have too much money to spend why ride around on a shed. Spend some of your money you tight git and buy a titanium frame and loads of carbon and super light bits! You cant take it with you. 😀
Barnes if you have too much money to spend why ride around on a shed.
because I'm demonstrating that you can have all the fun of mountain biking without significant expense. Expensive stuff is wasted on me because I'm always looking somewhere else and trashing my bike by riding it through water and crashing it. My camera is worth 5 times what my bike is 🙂
I had a light weight CF HT, it was very quick and I found myself in gears up hill that I'd never even contemplated. My riding is more the limiting factor in this equation though!
Since I'm not a podium finisher, it's a balance of which bike works best on which trails. Most of what I do will be medium - longer rides so the 29HT is huge fun and is 24-5lbs, where as the Turner Flux is great at all days in the mountains and 24hr events and weighs 25lbs.
Do I want to throw £££'s at bringing things down by 1-2 lbs? To what end? It's fine as it is; a happy balance. It's nice not to be constantly wondering what shedding 250g might make me into, or how much quicker Dalby's Red Route might be ridden in, a good place to be me thinks as the £ can be used for less selfish interests (house needs some work doing to it as does the garden).
My camera bodies are £2k a pop. My bikes are more! Hummm, maybe I've got this all inverted!
Well being fat or not is all relative isn't it... Less than 10% body mass in fat you're sharp, between 10 and 15% is what most of us should be (you know people taking regular exercise). More I am sorry but in my book you're fat (that is subject to age variation obviously).
Plus the lighter will break is a factomundo, get your whippet stuff down here and see how many time you'll break the rock (now I am waiting to get a good bollocking from njee)
I am unable to decipher one half of what you just typed and the other half reads like more drivel. Sorry.
Amazing how bicycles and their weights are able to ignore the laws of physics....
Total weight of bike plus rider plus camelbak full of gubbins?
say 100kg
Weight saved by weight weenie-ness?
say 4kg
Total performance improvement?
Not very much at all really....
...over a 2km climb, losing 4kg makes you 8.06 seconds faster.
If you climbed a 2km climb 3 times, I would guess that you wouldn't get times within 8 seconds of each other; so your presumed performance enhancement is lost in the noise...
fat, unfit, rich
Is this the equivilant of the famous triangle of words (strong, light, cheap) in weight weenie speak?
There's no way that a weight difference will have a uniform affect on different riders. Not talking here about "ignoring the laws of physics", but of people having different power output. If I do the climb in 10 minutes and my unfit mate does it in 15, then we repeat with 4kg less, do we both arrive 8.06 seconds faster? Will the exact same 8.06 occur if we do a 45 degree 2km climb or a 1 degree 2km climb? Or are your numbers actually total mince?
Obsessing with climbing is a nonsense of course, as if that's the only place weight makes a difference.
[i]Or are your numbers actually total mince?[/i]
The numbers are from analytic cycling website....
If you can do better, please show your working.
My point is that weight saving is vastly over-rated generally, and that weight saving for chubby weekend warriors is even more so...
[url] http://www.analyticcycling.com/ForcesLessWeight_Page.html [/url]
Lighter bikes are faster up and downhill. Fact. They make your ride more easier, faster and more fun. A lighter 6" bike will be much more entertaining than a heavier one.
They're easier to manouvre on downhills, easier to pop in the air, you're less knackered from the uphill, it's easier to maintain speed on the downhill and so you enjoy yourself more.
I'd much rather a 27/28lb 5/6" machine to something as big as my current bike which is 30lb. So long's the geometry stays the same, I'd be faster. And no, lighter bikes are not knocked off line more easily until you get to super low weights sub 20lbs.
I'm convinced that losing 2/3lbs off a bike will have more affect than losing 6lbs off yourself, and is much easier. I'm 11 stone now and my riding doesn't really change whether I'm down to 10.5 or up to 11.5.
Grr.
All this 'have a crap' stuff.. you morons. Have a crap when you need a crap. A light bike is still quicker up hills. Ride what you want but don't tell me my taste is wrong just because you're an arsehole.
Lightweight stuff's great, until you encounter rocks. Then it tends to bend..
Never broken any of my lightweight bikes (21lbs) until last weekend when the freehub broke which was one of the most standard parts on the damn thing. And they take a damn hard pounding.
YOU may bend light stuff, but you may be an oaf.
pointless having a weenie bike (apart from for pose factor) if you're not going to race on it
What's pointless is not getting the bike you fancy because someone on a forum informs you that it is wrong.
As for the percentage weight thing - 28 mins up the Cwmcarn on my 21lb bike versus 32 mins on my 30lb bike. Insignificant? Not in a race. Which bike do I usually take? The 30lb one. What does that tell you? That light bikes are faster up hills - SHOCK! 🙄
when was the last time u didnt pick a bike up an check weight ?
people who care about how good their camera is spend the rest of their time licking windows and stalking celebrities
Let's not forget also that a light bike is much easier to accelerate sharply, decelerate, flick through corners, hoick up over obstacles and finesse over technical bits - all of which make a great big difference to your fatigue levels on technical climbs such as Cwmcarn, which could explain my times.
I must admit I've not noticed much difference when saving or adding 1-2lbs on the road bike.. but on the MTB the difference is stark.
And since when is recreational MTBing all about time to the top of the hill? It's about feel, and light feels good on climbs and singletrack.
Weight off the bike feels more noticable, because the bike weighs many times less than you. All that your legs power however is the bike+you.
[i]I KNOW it weighs ABOUT...
Probably find its a lot more.[/i]
Probably not, as it was weighed on some scales which were calibrated (& owned by Trading Standards, who my brother in law works for)
Oh & a 'clem' is a stone. Old NorthEastern word for large stone or rock.
Let's not forget also that a light bike is much easier to accelerate sharply...
only if it escapes you - if you stay on the bike you have to accelerate at the same rate. The bike can move relative to you, but only within a limited envelope.
As for the percentage weight thing - 28 mins up the Cwmcarn on my 21lb bike versus 32 mins on my 30lb bike.
Well that's down to something other than bike weight - different tyres maybe? Unless of course you only weigh 3 stones and moving the weight is the only thing affecting your speed.
aracer - read the second post.
only if it escapes you - if you stay on the bike you have to accelerate at the same rate. The bike can move relative to you, but only within a limited envelope.
Yes, and it does that all the time on a technical climb.
Barnes - have you ever actually ridden a 21lb bike? Seriously?